Burton defends SEALs facing trial in abuse of terrorist

By Bridget Johnson – 03/04/10 02:30 PM ET

Reps. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) planned Thursday to present 180,000 signatures to Pentagon officials asking that the courts-martial against three Navy SEALs in the beating of an al-Qaeda suspect be dropped.

“These gentlemen are heroes in my opinion,” Burton, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Government Reform committees, said on Fox News. He said that the petition asks that the men be exonerated “and congratulate, them in my opinon.”

Special Warfare Operators 2nd Class Matthew McCabe and Jonathan Keefe and Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Julio Huertas were on the team that captured al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Hashim Abed for the 2004 slaying and mutilation of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah. After being killed, the contractors’ bodies were burned and hung from a bridge.

The SEALs are going on trial next month on charges that McCabe punched Abed in the stomach and gave him a bloody lip, and that the three made false statements about the incident.

“The al-Qaida manual that they all live by says that if you’re captured make the allegation that you’re abused by the military or whoever else captured you,” Burton said.

The congressman said he didn’t think the men would serve jail time, but that the case could ruin the SEALs’ careers and send a negative message to other members of the military. “These people risk their lives every day and they need to know we’re behind them 100 percent,” he said, adding that a member of al-Qaida “should never get the benefit of the doubt” over servicemembers.

“If I’d been one of the people who catpured this guy I would have broken both of his legs,” Burton said. “…Maybe I’m a little extreme.”

LUCKNOW, India — At least 22 elderly people in northern India have lost vision in one or both of their eyes after undergoing free cataract surgery at a state-owned clinic, a government official said Wednesday.

Health Minister Anant Kumar Singh said initial reports suggested they may have gone blind from infections caused by contaminated eye drops used during surgery.

The case marks the second time in three months that mass blindness has been reported after free government surgeries in the impoverished state of Uttar Pradesh. Nine people went blind after treatment in December.

The latest affected group, most of them between 60 to 70 years old, complained of blurred vision, swelling and itching in their eyes within days of surgery, said I.S. Srivastava, a senior health official in Uttar Pradesh.

He said most also had difficulty seeing in their second eye and it was possible that “all of them have lost their eye sight permanently.” All of the patients were sent to a government hospital in the northern city of Lucknow Tuesday night, he said.

Doctors at the state clinic have been ordered not to conduct any more surgeries until the inquiry is complete, Srivastava said.

The state’s top elected official, Mayawati, who uses just one name, has suspended two doctors who carried out the surgeries.

Nine patients lost their eyesight in December after undergoing cataract surgery at a state-owned eye hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district.

Health care in India is often dismal, with private facilities out of reach for most of the poor. Many are forced to go without health care or depend on public hospitals and clinics, which are frequently filthy, overcrowded, and lack full stocks of medicines.